


A Tree Grows in Philadelphia

by silvercistern



Series: librarian!Peeta [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-10
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:21:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvercistern/pseuds/silvercistern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She never expected some stupid cartoon would make her have a nervous breakdown. An Arbor Day librarian!Peeta story that you are going to regret reading.</p><p>Alternatively titled "Sorry About All the Royai, Tumblr."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tree Grows in Philadelphia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Abagail_Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abagail_Snow/gifts).



The brutal vibrations of the jackhammer rattled up Katniss’ arms. The percussive force was more intense than she expected, and she squared her shoulders against the impact. It hurt, but a good sort of hurt, the kind that made her feel strong and alive.

The block of sidewalk was nearly halfway broken up, large chunks of it in her wheelbarrow, and the rest of it in her hair. It was unseasonably warm for the end of April, and her tank top was soaked through from sweat. The dust from the demolition wafted through the air, and she found herself incredibly thirsty.

A pathetic little tree leaned against the side of the house. It was really nothing more than a trunk, smaller than Peeta’s wrist, with three scraggly branches. But he had wanted a tree, insisted that it would remind her of home since neither of them got out to Wissahickon Creek or Pennypack Park or any other remotely woodsy place often enough. She’d told him that cherry trees like this grew in Japan, not Pennsylvania, so it wasn’t going to remind her of anything, but he argued it was the spirit of the thing, and he tended to win pointless arguments.

So there she was with the jackhammer she’d borrowed from Finnick, destroying a perfectly good piece of sidewalk for a tree that was likely going to die.

It was a little surprising that the symbolic commitment behind planting a tree together (regardless of said tree’s likelihood to survive the sweltering city summer) hadn’t sent her running for the hills. It didn’t feel like too much too fast, or make her stomach turn nervously. It didn’t bother her at all, really. In fact, it was just a little sweet.

Or it _would_ be sweet if the originator of the idea hadn’t gone to get her a drink of water at least a half hour ago, and never returned.

She turned off the jackhammer, hefted it back onto the part of the sidewalk that was intact, then leaned the handle against the house. Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth, covered in pulverized concrete. If Peeta was still getting her water, he had probably drowned in it at this point.

Opening the screen she discovered that he had closed the storm door, which was really strange. As soon as it got warmer than fifty degrees outside, Peeta had all the windows in the house open. He loved fresh air, even the sort of smelly “fresh air” in the city, and he would risk all kind of weather to get it. Since it was nearly eighty now, the door should have been wide open, but it wasn’t.

Twisting the doorknob quickly revealed the reason.

Her boyfriend was on the couch, eyes riveted on the television, biting on his fist, a looking very emotional. The glass of water he had obviously been bringing her sat forgotten on the coffee table, next to the small, unopened package that had arrived in the mail earlier that morning.

“Not this again,” Katniss rolled her eyes before picking up the glass of water and taking a drink.

Peeta’s eyes flickered over to her momentarily, then back to the television, then back to her again, finally coming to the realization that he was caught.

“Forgot to turn the TV off…” he chuckled just a bit too good-naturedly. “Sorry, I got distracted. Who knew my favorite episode would be on?”

Katniss crossed her arms, “They don’t show cartoons like that in the middle of the afternoon. You’re watching Netflix.”

He swallowed uneasily, then found himself caught up in the action on the screen once again. She rubbed her nose, which was starting to itch from the concrete dust. Why couldn’t they just finish this?

“Peeta…” her voice was warning.

“Agh, I’m sorry,” he reached out for her blindly, eyes still on the screen, “but I just really love this part. The episode’s almost over.”

He seemed to love _all_ the parts, since this was the third time he’d watched the dumb cartoon in a month.

Peeta tended to fixate on things he liked. A lot. There were his books, of course, and then other people’s “art” which Katniss didn’t even pretend to consider artistic. He painted things himself, large explosions of color that Katniss didn’t really understand per say, though she didn’t have to understand them to think they were lovely. But he stacked all of those canvases in his studio and just let them sit. He wanted to decorate their house with paintings done by other people: strange geometric shapes and weird twisted human forms, like those melting clocks. He talked about them a lot, when he wasn’t talking about his Japanese cartoons, or Chris Ware, or that cheesy blue phonebooth show, or how to make the best kind of croissants. 

He talked about _everything_ he liked a lot.

At least he wasn’t one of those Cross Fit people. That would have just been too much.

“Our tree is going to…” she began as his hand finally found her wrist and he pulled her down to the couch next to him.

“It’s just _such_ a good scene,” he was saying, not even realizing she had begun talking. “I mean, he loves her enough to _let her die_. That’s something you pretty much never see.”

There was no stopping him now. She just had to let things take their course.

“That makes no sense,” she said right before taking another drink of water. She didn’t know anything (or _want_ to know anything) about the fate of the characters on the screen, but she did know that the tree was going to die if they kept screwing around. Then she was going to have to find someone who knew how to lay concrete to fix the hole in the sidewalk she had spent all morning making.

“No, it does!” he turned to make eye contact, his glasses catching the sunlight streaming in the window. “Because if she lives, he dies and vice-versa. In the situation they’re in, one of them is going to die. They can’t get around it.”

 “So he just _lets_ her die for him, then?” Katniss side-eyed him dismissively. “And that’s supposed to be what, _romantic_ or something?”

“It’s more complicated than that, really,” Peeta sputtered, in shock that she was encouraging him to go on at all. His current obsession was barely tolerated, like a sort of annoying cousin who Katniss wasn’t cruel enough to neglect to invite to parties, but she certainly wasn’t going to have a conversation with him. This was a rare occasion, and Peeta didn’t know what to do with it so he just kept talking.

“On top of all that, they’re trying to force him to do something that will pretty much end the world–”

“So, she dies, he’s sad, but everything’s okay,” Katniss shrugged. “People sacrifice themselves all the time in stories.”

“But what happens when you reach an impasse? When two people are trying so hard to keep each other safe that they become each other’s worst enemy?”

She really regretted getting into this stupid conversation.

Katniss didn’t like to think about divergent possibilities. Her life was as it was right now, not any other way. She had worked hard to make certain Prim was free to study what she wanted. She was secure in her own work, made enough to survive and then some, she didn’t have any debt and all of her bills were paid on time. There was money in the bank if anything happened, and a life insurance policy for Prim and even Peeta, if the _worst_ happened. Even though she was only thirty, Katniss was taking no risks.

The people she loved were protected and would survive she was certain of it.  She didn’t allow herself to consider alternate realities where the struggle for survival would be different. Harder. Life had been hard enough as it was.

But Peeta obviously did. He immersed himself in stories, while she mostly just fell asleep. Even when he was reading to her, she was more interested in the animated cadence of his voice than any actual plot. But he got really caught up in whatever he was reading or watching. When books ended or shows came to a close, he wandered around the house like he had lost his best friend.

It was easy to tease him about, but the fact was, he wasn’t just some kind of emotional nut job. Stories affected him because they made him think about what _he’d_ do in the same situation. They made him feel more alive somehow, reminding him of how he felt about his life, his work, and even about her.

How he’d always feel about her, no matter what world they lived in.

That was more terrifying than any kind of symbolic tree, because Katniss just didn’t _know_ about any of that stuff. She didn’t allow herself to think about things like who she really was, and how she’d be if life were drastically different. She didn’t have time for pointless speculation.

But all of a sudden, here she was, wondering just what she would do if someone tried to take Peeta away from her.

The man in question rubbed absentminded circles on the dirty, delicate skin covering the inside of her wrist with his thumb, completely unaware of the existential atomic bomb he had just dropped.

She buried it deep and hoped it wouldn’t explode.

“Anyway,” he moved his hand to enlace his fingers with hers, “that’s a horrible thought. The reason I like this scene is because he respects her agency so much.”

Her confusion was enough of a distraction for the moment.

Katniss readily admitted that she had never been great in school, but she was sensible enough to know she wasn’t a complete moron. Her job was complicated, and lately she’d been asked by several different local trade schools to consider taking on an apprentice. Stupid people weren’t that good at things as challenging as high altitude welding. She wasn’t a stupid person.

But sometimes Peeta slipped into a vocabulary that was reserved for NPR hosts, and it never failed to make her feel like an idiot.

“Her what?” she asked.

 “Her agency. Her ability to make her own choices. It’s like… her personhood, kinda.” Peeta was always happy to explain his jargon, and he never seemed to take her ignorance as any indication of stupidity. Unfortunately they rarely had conversations about the technical aspects of welding, so she never really had the opportunity to turn the tables. It was hard not to feel, at the very least, like an uncultured redneck.

“Wouldn’t he respect that enough to keep her alive?” she considered the dark-haired cartoon man on the screen with annoyance. She saw him more often than Prim at this point, and she wanted him to go away. “She’d be a person for longer.”

“Well, yeah, but in this situation it’s obvious that this is a choice she’s making. His enemies are trying to use her against him, and she refuses to be used. To be a piece in their game. And then he respects what she’s chosen to do with her body, even though it’s breaking his heart to do it.”

“This is a _feminist_ thing isn’t it?” she said the word like it was covered in concrete dust. Feminism was safe enough, if she could direct the conversation there. Feminism didn’t involve the image of a blond, bleeding out while she had to decide between him and the end of existence for all of humanity. Humanity that included Prim.

Thinking about it didn’t make her feel like throwing up.

“It… can be…” he said carefully, as though he had just stepped into a minefield.

“You know how I feel about that,” she snorted.

“And, you, Katniss,” his voice was deliberate, “know how _I_ feel about that.”

“I’m not a feminist.”

Peeta sighed, “I am not going to argue with you over semantics, especially since me, a privileged, overeducated white male, trying to convince you, a blue-collar woman of color, that you are or aren’t a feminist is just… problematic.”

“Everyone has problems,” she began, just as she always did, “not just women. I’m not going to blame anyone else for my life being hard. Everyone’s life is hard.”  

Peeta shook his head, “Just because you’re strong enough to overcome the sexism inherent in our culture by being incredibly dedicated and talented in a field dominated by men, doesn’t mean that our society isn’t affected by unfair gender expectations. Don’t you remember that asshole, Cato? He was sexually harassing you, and he called my sexuality into question the instant he saw me. Most women, hell, most men wouldn’t be able to work under those kinds of conditions. Society shouldn’t function so only the strongest are capable of succeeding.”

Taking a deep breath, he turned to her with a softer glance. He let go of her hand and tucked a lose piece of hair behind her ear while leaning in as though he was about to kiss her. It was a sneaky tactic. “Of course, it does mean you are really a phenomenal human being. But not everyone is as incredible as you are and so–”

 “That blonde lady should be dead,” she interrupted, nodding at the television, deciding maybe it hadn’t actually been the best idea to continue the conversation they’d had about five hundred times without ever resolving. “That’s too much blood for any one person to lose. Also, why’d she wear a white jacket to a fight? It’s not very practical.”

The less sense the scene made, the easier it was brush away. Unfortunately, the idea was stuck in her head and just wouldn’t go away. She was going to have a nervous breakdown over a stupid cartoon that she actively hated.

He glared at her, looking somewhat betrayed to be interrupted mid-kiss attempt, “Katniss, you can either watch the _whole episode_ and then criticize it, or we can argue about feminism – you can’t just jump between both to avoid doing either.”

“Oh yeah? And telling me what to do fits into this whole ‘agency’ business how?” Anger had crept up on her, smoking in the shadows of her earlier discomfort and now it burst into a rolling flame.

He looked decidedly trapped by his own argument, stuttering out, “I’m not telling you what to do! I’m just telling you what I’ll personally allow! No I mean, I… er… I’m allowed to have boundaries too, okay?”

“Well,” she stood up, feeling both furious at the world and gratified that he’d given her an excuse to exit the situation, “I don’t understand your fancy philosophy talk, _as usual_ , but that tree is going to die, so I’m going to go plant it.”

She slammed the storm door behind her. 

* * *

The painful rattle of the jackhammer felt reassuring.

It was a stupid cartoon. Nothing to get worked up over. Just because the world was unpredictable and who _knew_ when life would change and suddenly she could be in the sort of situation where she had to choose between Peeta and something else…

Something like her sister, who was vastly more important than anything like the fate of the world.

Just because all that was truedidn’t mean anything. Why couldn’t she stop thinking about this? It had just been a stupid cartoon. Cartoons were for _children_.

They weren’t supposed to make her think about her mom.

Ruth Everdeen had always been such a strange combination of lace and steel. In the seventies, she’d fallen in love with a man she met during pharmacy school, a man with beautiful grey eyes who was definitely _not_ white _._ Shebrought him back from Pittsburg to rural Pennsylvania, a place where such romances were still to this day considered a bad idea by the general population, and had been completely taboo then. Ruth ended up estranged from her parents in the process.

They’d died before she could reconcile with them, even if she’d wanted to.

That sort of thing required a great deal of bravery.

She’d scrimped and saved through the early years of her marriage to finally open a small pharmacy of her own just as her first daughter was born. Katniss’ earliest memories were of sitting on the floor in the back room making towers of the empty orange prescription bottles while her father organized the inventory, singing to her all the while.

All because of her mother’s strength and dedication. It was like a Lifetime movie, really. But when her father died so unexpectedly, something had happened to the woman the whole town respected.

Ruth had crumpled up into herself, taking her own life and leaving her girls in an emotional wasteland.  Prim had been eighteen. She’d cried herself sick for months. Broken up with her boyfriend. Stopped eating.

Katniss had been terrified her sister was going to die.

So she had worked. Worked so hard to save Prim, to make certain that what was left of her family would survive, no matter what. The only thing that was going to make her sister keep going was a future worth living for, so she created one from the very sweat off her back.  

And for years, for _years,_ Katniss had hated her mother with every ounce of her being.

She stopped the jackhammer, arms trembling too hard to hold onto a piece of heavy machinery. Her teeth clenched and unclenched in absolute fury. She felt dizzy with it, her blood running fast and hot through her veins and threatening to burst out of her forehead. She wanted to slam her head into the wall over and over again.

Because for the first time in her life, she understood what her mother had felt. Peeta had managed to quietly bury himself deep inside her heart, and there was no way to lose him without losing herself. He wasn’t even in danger, but the mere consideration of the delicate threads that held him in her life was enough to give her a panic attack.

The most horrible part was that if the worst did happen, and she lost him, her inevitable and unavoidable surrender would be something Peeta could never forgive, even if he was gone.

Picking up the sledgehammer, she attacked the large chunks of concrete as though the action would drive the ghost of her mother back into the ground.

Fucking _cartoons_. 

* * *

“I’m really sorry, Katniss,” his voice was at her shoulder as she finished, dropping the sledgehammer, slumping over, and putting her hands on her knees. The air caught in the concrete dust before it reached her lungs, making her throat ragged, but she gasped it down anyway. The tear tracks running down her face looked like lines of sweat, and she didn’t tell him otherwise.

He thought she was angry with him.

Relationships were pointlessly confusing.

“Just help me with this stupid tree,” she muttered angrily, grabbing the nearby handle of the spade and shoving it in his face. He traded the spade for a glass of water, which she gulped down so quickly it was gone before she even slouched onto the stoop.

He smiled uncertainly at her, still under the impression that she was furious because he had been slacking off, “I would have come out sooner, but I thought you’d probably need something to eat more than you’d need my help, so I whipped up some cheese buns. They’re cooling on the counter.”

What Katniss called “cheese buns,” most people called “Bisquick Cheese Biscuits,” and Peeta absolutely hated them. They came from a mix, required almost no effort to make, and he insisted they tasted like mildly cheesy cardboard. When _he_ made cheese rolls, they were from scratch: crusty on the outside, moist on the inside, and full of gooey gruyere, not dry fragments of cheap cheddar.

But she liked the ones from the box better.

It was the worst kind of peace offering because she wasn’t actually even angry with him. Irritated, maybe, but not angry. His thoughtfulness just reminded her of how much she lov… _liked_ him, which made everything worse. Her arms ached from her recent burst of exertion, but she pushed herself to her feet anyway and trudged into the house without even saying thank you. 

* * *

When she came back outside, crumbs still sticking to the corners of her mouth, he’d taken his shirt off.

The plaid button-up and his white undershirt were hanging on his scooter. Every few moments he lifted his glasses to wipe the sweat out of his eyes with a handkerchief he kept in his back pocket. Across the street, two messy hipster girls, one with short purple curls and the other with a Skrillex haircut were openly staring, barely able to hold on to their brightly colored bikes.

They needed to go back to Fishtown, or West Philly, or wherever it was they were from.

Peeta didn’t seem to notice them, or even her. He’d been shoveling long enough that the tops of his shoulders were beginning to freckle and burn. Tiny rivulets of sweat ran down his chest, sliding over the sculpted muscles around his hips and disappearing down into his snug jeans.

The scene was borderline pornographic.

“Here,” she said bluntly, sticking a glass of water in his face.

He leaned against the shovel and took the glass, smirking just a little bit.

“So you’re still mad at me?”

“I was never mad at you,” she answered truthfully, although it just sounded petulant. 

“Well you’re mad at something now. Is it those girls across the street?” he teased. “Because I can put on a burqua. I’d do that for you. I can’t guarantee any sort of quality for this hole I’m digging after that, though. Not a lot of range of motion and it’s really hot out here.”

“I’m not mad about those stupid girls,” she said through gritted teeth.

“It’s a good thing I’m used to your scowling,” he grinned. “It’d kill a lesser man, I think.”

“Shut up and drink your water,” she muttered, looking at the hole he’d dug. It was more than deep enough. Not waiting for him to help, she spun around on the ball of her foot and walked to the tree where it was leaning, sparse and sad, against the building. Crouching down, she grasped the burlap bag that wrapped around the roots, braced herself, and then stood up. Pathetic as it was, it still weighed at least a hundred and thirty pounds.

His response was instantaneous.

“Katniss, what are you doing?! You’re going to hurt yourself!” He rushed to her side, trying to take the tree from her.

“I can do it myself,” she grunted. It was the truth.

He put his hand on her shoulder and gently but forcefully held her in place.

“I’m sure you can, but the point was for us to do this together, remember?”

She glared at him.

“Yeah, yeah I know. I messed up earlier,” he took the burlap sack and lowered it to the ground right next to the hole in the sidewalk. “But I felt like I was getting in the way. I still don’t know very much about demolition I was going to come out as soon as you stopped jackhammering and dig the best hole of all time…”

She wasn’t mad at him, and she was horrible at pretending she was, but he was too hell-bent on apologizing to notice.

“I’m not angry at you,” she said in the softest voice she could muster, which sounded more like a grumble than anything else. “I was a little annoyed, but I’m just feeling upset about something else. It has nothing to do with you.”

The last part was a lie.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” his eyes were soft behind the smudged lenses of his glasses.

“I’m fine,” she said much too quickly. “Can’t we just plant this thing? I really don’t want it to die. Then how am I supposed to remember the woods?”

He chuckled at her sad attempt at levity, then nodded, letting her be for the time being.

They planted the tree in a companionable silence.

The hipster girls watched the whole time.

* * *

She offered to make dinner that night.

Peeta normally cooked. He enjoyed it more, and since she almost always had to shower after work, and the library hardly ever made anyone sweaty, it just made more sense for him take charge of their dinners, a practice that spilled over into the weekends too. But this afternoon they weren’t working, and she didn’t want to be alone with her thoughts. Cooking seemed a good enough distraction.

He didn’t protest. After the incident with the television earlier, he seemed eager to make things up to her. He offered to drive the load of broken concrete to the dump while she got everything ready in the kitchen. It was an interesting role-reversal for them.

Finnick had brought a freezer full of fish back from his most recent trip down the shore. It was more than he and Annie could eat, he insisted. Never one to waste food, Katniss had brought several home with her when she picked up the jackhammer earlier. Now she methodically boned them, focusing on the task and not allowing herself to think about anything else. Years of hunting with her father had left her excellent with a knife, and she fixated her thoughts on the smooth feeling of metal against flesh.

She was using Peeta’s iPad to blast the Johnny Cash Pandora station, and the music was loud enough that she didn’t hear him come back into the house, or even go upstairs to shower. It was only obvious he was home when he rushed down the stairs, sounding like a herd of elephants as usual.

He swaggered into the kitchen holding the small package that had come in the mail earlier. His hair was wet and slicked back from the shower, not yet dry enough to curl like it normally did. A lot of it stuck up in the air, and one little antenna pointed straight down across his forehead. 

But that wasn’t the worst of it.

“Well, hellooooo there Katniss,” he drawled.

“You look ridiculous,” she said to the fish.

He strutted over to her, and put his head on her shoulder, and they were right there, in her face, the ugliest glasses she had ever seen.

His glasses were normally just simple plastic frames. They were not too big, not too small, and fit his face perfectly. She liked them.

But this monstrosity was something else altogether. They were metal, and for the most part had no frame at all, except for the bridge of the nose and hinges at his temple. Simultaneously too skinny and too wide, they made him look like a serial killer. She told him as much.

“Seriously?” he pulled back, looking contemplative. “Hm, guess I’ll just have to try another. But rest assured, I’m sure there’s a pair in here that will bring you to your knees.”

She snorted and chopped off the fish’s head.

“So, are you going to tell me why you’re angry,” he asked in a conversational tone, rooting through the box for a different pair of glasses. “Or am I going to have to torture you for this information?”

It was a far cry from the passive aggressive Peeta of several months ago. Or maybe it wasn’t. This wasn’t hisproblem, or even really _their_ problem. It was hers, which probably made things different.

Whatever it was, she didn’t want to talk about it.  

“Why are you getting new glasses?” she asked instead.

“Oh!” he pulled another pair out of the box, then turned his back to her so she couldn’t see him put them on. “Well, these are getting kind of old, and if they break, I’ll be out of luck. It’s good to have a backup.”

He ran his fingers through his hair once the glasses were on, then spun around on one foot, moving too fast for her to actually see what he looked like until he made another rotation. They were horned rimmed, and his stupid hair had managed to fall in a nearly perfect side part. In three steps, he was by her side, grabbing her wrists and spinning her around in some kind of dance move she had no idea how to complete.

“I’m holding a knife, Peeta,” she sputtered as he dipped her, looking like an old timey photo of someone’s once-sexy grandpa. He winked at her, but she set her mouth in a thin line.

“No?”

“No.”

Stalking back to the box, he dug around again, pulling out a pair of practical pair of wire frames with rounded angles. They weren’t even halfway on his face before she asked if he was going to cook meth in their basement. The angular, bright blue plastic squares met with similar disapproval.

“You’re a hard nut to crack, Katniss Everdeen,” he knitted his eyebrows together, before turning once more to the box. “There’s only one more pair.”

He turned back to her, and for a moment, his demeanor changed completely. Once again, he was the shy, somewhat awkward and just-a-little-too-eager man she had first met in the library almost two years ago. And it wasn’t just a show. He was feeling less than confident in himself. He wanted her to like these glasses, for some reason.

Or maybe he just wanted to feel like she liked him, because she wasn’t doing a particularly great job of letting him know that today.

The glasses were round. Metal frames. His hair was starting to dry, and it lay unkempt and floppy on either side of his forehead.

Her mouth went dry.

She swallowed quickly and returned her attentions to the fish. But it was too late. He’d seen her drop her defenses and she was done for.

Instead of approaching her, he returned to the box on the table, and began methodically repacking the previous frames. She watched his hands as he deftly rehinged the temples, put them back in their original packaging, and sat them gently in the box. His fingers were long and moved with artistic precision.

She realized she hadn’t moved the knife in at least a minute, and attacked the filet with renewed vigor. 

He stretched, lifting his arms, and his back and shoulder muscles flexed, extremely visible in the tight black shirt he was wearing.

She almost chopped off the tip of her finger.

Still he kept his back to her, walking to the sink and filling the electric teakettle with water before returning it to its base and turning it on. She was fixated on his thumb as it slid against the on-off switch.

There was not supposed to be anything erotic about electric teakettles. Whatever he was doing, he needed to stop immediately. Or start. Or just… she didn’t even know. She should probably just punch him in the face.

The teapot was out of the sideboard, filled with tea, and he was in the process of pouring water into it when she realized that the knife was hanging loosely out of one of her hands and she was actually just leaning on the fish with the other. With an extraordinary burst of focus, she finished dressing the fish, and yanked open a nearby drawer, scrambling inside for the roll of foil.

It took her much longer than it should have. Her fingers didn’t seem to want to move and the foil eluded her at every turn. He was pouring a cup of tea for himself in a single controlled motion by the time she finally managed to wrap and shove the filets into the refrigerator. She leaned against the door, feeling like a crazy person, and not ready to give in just yet.

And then he made a small noise of pleasure as he drank, and any resolve she might have had was completely gone

She turned mechanically to look at him.

He was leaning against the table, elbow propped against one of the chairs, and a cup of tea in the other hand. The steam from it fogged up one of the lenses of those _stupid_ glasses. The look on his face was completely innocent.

The bastard. He knew exactly what he was doing.

It took two steps, and they were toe to toe. She reached up with a hand trembling with something she insisted was leftover anger, but probably wasn’t, and wrapped her fingers around the teacup, pulling it sharply from his grasp, then lowering it to the table where she firmly laid it to rest. The porcelain against the wood made a sharp sound that echoed through the entire kitchen.

And then Peeta smirked.

She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, spun him around, and slammed him against the refrigerator. It was infuriating, him standing there just being so… _himself_ and knowing just knowing how much he affected her and not doing anything about it, just waiting.

The glare she gave him would have melted steel, but he just chuckled.

He knew.

She lunged forward to kiss him, but was stopped by his hands on her shoulders.

“I said, one of these pairs of glasses would bring you to your _knees_ , Katniss.”

She punched the refrigerator as hard as she could, right next to his face.

“I don’t think so,” she growled.

But, Peeta knew her better than that. He hadn’t flinched at all. “I doubt you’re going to get what you want that way,” he said softly.

She was squeezing her legs together so hard it was difficult to move.

“Of course,” he added casually, “we can always just go watch more–”

There was a resounding crack as she dropped to her knees on the hardwood floor.

Her fingers wouldn’t work on his belt, and then when she finally got it open, she pulled so hard the buckle came apart. If he was surprised, he didn’t show it. She scowled at him as she opened his button fly, a horrible thing that took forever, but he just looked down at her, smirking the tiniest bit.

She was going to wipe that stupid smirk off of his stupid face.

There was no preamble, just pulling his cock out of his pants and all but swallowing it. They’d been doing this for awhile, and she knew what he liked. There was pressure on her throat, and her soft palate rose, cutting off her air supply until she couldn’t stand not breathing anymore and she moved her head away with a gasp.

The look on his face was worth any ounce of discomfort. His smirk was only hanging on by a thread, teeth digging into his lower lip so hard she was surprised he wasn’t drawing blood. She was rarely willing to do this, but he had been playing with fire, and now he was about to get burned.

“If you make a noise,” she swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, “one single noise, I’m going to stop.”

She didn’t give him a chance to respond, but the reaction in his entire body as she took him again was immediate. The muscles in his legs locked, and his back slammed against the refrigerator, hands scrambling for something to hold onto that wasn’t her head. He knew better than to grab her right now.

The difference between a good blowjob and a bad one had a lot less to do with teeth and tongue, and a lot more to do with who was in charge. Regardless of the reasons behind her anger, there was too much of it. She wasn’t about to give away a single ounce of power right now.

He tilted his head back, knocking his skull against the freezer and panting for desperate quiet breaths as she opened her throat and swallowed him.

“What’s that?” she asked in a completely normal voice, pulling away to look up at him. “Did you say something, Peeta?”

His lips clamped shut and he shook his head frantically, new glasses all but shaking off his face as he did so. She’d known him for two years, and never before this moment had he ever been so completely _silent._ Keeping eye contact, she lowered her mouth and ran her tongue across the soft skin underneath his cock, licking him gently.

He was basically hyperventilating.

The floor was uncomfortable, and based on the fact was that he was so desperate, he was probably willing to take care of her in any way she asked at this point. So she stood, and put one hand on his chest, while she trailed the other across his thighs. He’d be a blubbering mess, but he was taking the whole “don’t say anything” bit _incredibly_ seriously.

She scowled at him, and he swallowed as though it was actually the most desirable thing he’d ever seen.

“Take me upstairs,” she ordered.

He made two motions, one to tuck himself back into his pants, and the other, grabbing her around the knees and back as he lifted her. She was still wearing loose fitting work clothes covered in concrete dust, but he couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away. They were the size of silver dollars.

When they reached the bedroom, he lay her down like she was a precious wonderful thing, but she grabbed the neck of his tee shirt and pulled him down next to her, rolling on top of him in a fluid motion. His cloth-covered cock pressed against the juncture of her thighs, hot and insistent, but his arms lay at his sides, as though he didn’t know what to do with them.

“Make me feel good, Peeta,” she said calmly. “But quietly.”

His fingers fluttered at her sides, reaching for the hem of her shirt to lift over her head as he sat up underneath her. He gathered the strands of hair that lay on her neck and lifted them away, kissing the juncture of neck and collarbone while his other hand worked on unbuttoning her jeans, shucking them off as quickly as was humanly possible.

He lifted his head, catching her eyes and lowering his forehead against hers, his eyes frantic with want, but filled with the sort of love that crossed universes.

That was enough of that.

With a swivel of her hips, she shook him loose, pressing his shoulders into the mattress as she lifted herself off of him, pulling down his underwear just far enough to free his cock. The fabric around his thighs limited his range of motion, but she didn’t care as she sank down onto him.

His hands fisted in the sheets, but he didn’t make a sound.

Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she swiveled her hips, riding him hard. He was still wearing his shirt, and he watched her like she was some kind of strange creature he had never seen before. Fingers scrambled on the small of her back, and his body got stiffer and stiffer, until she knew he had been coasting on the edge of release for quite some time.

“Do you want to?” she asked, unable, despite their compromising position, to be any more specific than that.

He nodded desperately.

“So do it,” she said quietly, smiling just a little.

It was like she’d flipped a switch. His back bowed as he came, lifting her up off the mattress just a little. His whole body shook with all of the restrained effort.

And he gasped. Just a fragment of a sound, really, but it was so raw it tore her own orgasm out of her just as easily as if his head had been buried between her legs.

She collapsed at his side, all of her anger drained away. 

* * *

 

“I don’t think I love you enough to let you die,” she muttered into his shoulder.

“What?” he asked lazily, lifting his head up to look at her.

She sighed with annoyance into his skin, and the puff of air blew the loose strands of hair around her face.

“I don’t love you enough to let you die if you asked me to, even if it was for some great cause. Sorry.”

His chuckled rumbled up through his chest, she felt it before the sound came out.

“I’m sure there’s a not-dead version of me in some alternate universe who really appreciates that,” he smirked.

She didn’t say anything.

“Wait… you’re serious,” his tone immediately changed and he rolled onto his shoulder, bringing up his hand to cup her face.

She tried to wiggle away from him, feeling angry and embarrassed, because this was obviously stupid and why had she gotten so worked up over something so idiotic?

His sudden attack of laughter didn’t make things any better.

“I don’t either,” he finally said, stopping her escape in its tracks.

“What?”

“Love you enough, apparently. Because there’s no way in hell I’d ever let you die if I could possibly stop it. What can I say? I just have absolutely no respect for your personhood, I guess.”

She pushed a pillow in his face.

“It scared you, hm?” he had burrowed under the pillow to rest his head into the crook of her neck. “Realizing that?”

There weren’t really words for how much it scared her, so she just grunted in assent.

“You’re not your mom,” he said softly. She didn’t know how he knew, but he did. She buried her nose in his hair an inhaled deeply. It smelled like his shampoo. Or maybe her shampoo. Someone’s shampoo that was nice and soothing.

“You don’t know that,” she told him.

He lifted his head to look her in the eyes. “You know what? You’re right. But I know that whoever you are, you’re worth the risk.”

“I’ve got to finish dinner,” she muttered gruffly, crawling out of bed and struggling into her pants.

But she was smiling and they both knew it.

* * *

 

Later that night, she Skyped Prim. They talked about their mother.

For the first time since the suicide of the woman who had raised them, Katniss cried tears that weren’t full of rage. 

And the tree made it through the summer.

 

 


End file.
